


Further To Fall

by HenryMercury



Series: Dee [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Case Fic, F/M, Female Dean Winchester, Gender Issues, Gender Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 00:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1531118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dee’s come out of fistfights with demons in better shape than she ended up the one time she tried to apply liquid eyeliner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Further To Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://henrymercury.tumblr.com/) as henrymercury so feel free to hit me up over there.

Dee stares at the mirror, then down at the little round compact of blush sitting on the bathroom counter, then up to the heavens. She shoots Castiel a mostly-sarcastic plea for help just to irritate him. She knows nobody’s listening, knows nobody cares and nobody _should_ care, because it’s not like she’s really in trouble here. She’s just putting on makeup.

And a black halter-necked dress so clingy it’s genuinely terrifying.

And a pair of strappy gold shoes that promise to disable her before the vamp they’re hunting even gets a look in.

 _And_ some lacy red bra that doesn’t so much hold her boobs as shove them out the unbelievably deep vee of her neckline.

God help her.

She picks up the eyeliner pencil and stares it down. It could be worse, right? There could be false lashes involved.

Dee’s come out of fistfights with demons in better shape than she ended up the one time she tried to apply liquid eyeliner—and the fact that most people seem to consider that a failing on her part, failure as a woman or something, is _beyond_ full of shit. She just got back from an extended vacation in _Hell,_ and now a part of her almost wishes she were back in the pit, where if you had a face left at all, you were one of the lucky ones. It might not have been a picnic—far from it—but at least Hell was honest about what it was and what it demanded of its prisoners. Up here, it’s all about navigating a set of expectations that no one with a vagina will ever manage to meet, playing pointless games that have been rigged against her since the moment the doctor held her and said _it’s a girl_.

People weren’t so focused on what holes or appendages you had where when limbs were being hacked off and new bodily cavities gouged every minute.

 “You alright in there?” Sam calls through the door.

“Yeah,” Dee says, and goes back to staring in the mirror. Something dark flashes in her eyes, and she’s not sure whether she’s imagined it or whether it’s just how she looks now. She doesn’t know whether it’s emptiness or fullness or both, loss or relief. Does the emptiness come from something she lost down on the rack, or something she lost when she was dragged back up into the day?

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Sam offers, assuming that it’s the idea of being bait on this hunt that’s got Dee’s blood boiling and her bones freezing inside her all once.

But the thing is, she _does_ have to do this. It’s by far the most efficient course of action, and the only damn plan they’ve got left.

“What, you don’t think I can handle myself?” she snaps back, words that fall automatically from her mouth. She’s the older sibling here, the one who’s doing the protecting just as she always has done. Dee’s been able to handle herself since she was fucking four years old, but people are never going to stop assuming she’s vulnerable. Recognising that fact and accepting it are two different things, and she’s done the one but will die again before she does the other.

Sam sighs, because he knows exactly what Dee’s thinking. He’s had the full lecture enough times.

“You know that isn’t what I meant.”

And yeah, she knows it isn’t, because Sam can be the kind of sensitive new-age guy who’s into legalising gay marriage and eating salad and discussing feminism and whatever else. He just hasn’t come to fight for any of those things by the kind of necessity that Dee’s come to her unabashed mouthiness and prickly hide. He’s tall and strong and white and straight and lots of girls seem to find him attractive with his whole floppy-hair-puppy-eyes thing, and sometimes it just feels like Sam has argued but he’s never had to really _fight_ , to scrabble just to get the words heard like Dee’s found herself doing for as long as she can remember, _especially_ when Dad was around. Dad and Sam had had their disagreements, but the old man had always _listened_ to Sam.

Of course, she knows better than to truly believe that he’s had it easy, or that he’s the one she should blame for her problems.  

“Yeah, Sammy, I know,” she says. “And I fucking hate this plan, but it’s the only one we’ve got. It’s my pride or another bloodied corpse strung up by her purse strap in the street.”

She takes Sam’s silence as agreement.

“I’m a painted whore,” she tells the mirror despairingly as she brushes dark powder into the creases of her eyelids.

 

Once she’s finished poking herself with the eyeliner and mascara, colouring herself in with blush and eyeshadow, slicking her short hair down with icky gel and smearing lipstick all over her mouth, Dee braces herself and opens the bathroom door.

Sam’s over on his bed, staring intently at his laptop screen, and rather than slinking out with her tail between her legs, Dee calls out to grab his attention, confront the situation head on like she always does.

“So, whaddya think Sammy? Do I look like Angelina Jolie?” she smirks, because she’s not sure what her face will do if she doesn’t command it to do something specific.

Sam looks up, looks her over.

“You look good,” he says, with uncertainty.

“Gee, thanks for that ringing endorsement,” Dee snorts.

No matter how ridiculous she might look, she’s got a blade long and sharp enough to cut a monster’s head off strapped to her thigh just behind the spot where the tight fabric splits. It’s comforting to know she’s still lethal in lipstick.

Hell, maybe even _especially_ in lipstick. She’d name this shade Dead Man’s Blood for every imaginable reason. There’s that weird feeling at work again, the one she’d first encountered with the help of Rhonda Hurley, some silken underwear and a pair of pumps. She’s met sirens and she knows how they work, knows she doesn’t have magically seductive saliva, but she still feels like she might be able to lure a man or two to his death with her breasts. The idea of using her femininity as a weapon is the perfect opposite of the approach she usually takes.

It’s the precise approach she’s planning on using tonight, though.

The vamp they’re going after is—surprise surprise—a total douchebag. He’s made a habit of trawling some upmarket bar in the area for wealthy businesspeople and high-end prostitutes, turning them, collecting the rich folks’ money when they’re recruited to the nest, and using the hookers to help continue the cycle. Word is he likes to visit this place in person on Friday nights though, because they have live music. And because every few weeks he’ll find a young woman to drink instead of turn, then string her up from the electrical wires somewhere across the city like some kind of sick Christmas decoration. A message to remind all the influential folks he’s got in his pocket who’s boss, and a night’s entertainment in one.

It all might not be such a pain if they hadn’t tried to tail him _last_ Friday night only to find he’d completely vanished, another dead body the only trace of him they could find. Humiliation plus another body on their hands—hence the offensive they’re going on tonight.

Dee glances back at her brother, only to find him staring, a little wide-eyed. At first she thinks it’s finally sunk in that Dee is wearing a dress (and quite a dress, at that) and his poor geeky brain has melted trying to comprehend it—but then Dee hears a rustling behind her.

“Hello, Deanna,” Cas grumbles.

Because of _course_ the angel-of-the-lord would appear when Dee’s dressed up like a prostitute. Just freakin’ awesome.

“Cas,” she says, keeps it sharp, keeps her chin up and tries not to give anything away. “What do you want?”

Cas does one of his many puzzled faces, tilts his head to the side ever so slightly.

“You requested assistance.”

“No I didn—” and then Dee remembers praying for Castiel to come down and save her from the horrors of makeup. “Oh. Dude, I was only joking about that.”

Cas frowns, brows cutting deep crevices into the skin of his forehead.

“Jesus, relax. Everything’s fine, you’re free to go home and brush your feathers,” she tells him.

The damn frown only intensifies.

“What is the purpose of this outfit?” Cas asks at length, gesturing to Dee’s whole person.

Dee barks out a laugh at the confusion on the angel’s face.

“I’m trying to look like a classy escort,” she says with a wink and an exaggerated pout. “Say, is it working, Cas? Do you want to take me home and—”

“If you require money, you do not need to solicit sexual contact in order to acquire it,” Cas says, and bless him, he seems so concerned. It’s like he’s horrified at the thought of his not-very-righteous, not-very-male Righteous Man engaging in some sinful activity.

“I know that,” she snaps. “It’s only a cover for the job we’re working.”

“That is a relief,” Cas’ face finally relaxes. Dee thinks this has to be just about the most expressive she’s seen him.

But it still grates on her that if she _were_ to go out and have a bit of profitable sex, Cas would be _that_ bothered by it. He’s seen her tearing souls apart in Hell, for god’s sake. It also grates on Dee that she even cares what Cas would or would not be bothered by, what he would or wouldn’t look down on her for. The guy’s an _angel_. He looks down his nose at them all anyway.

Or he’s supposed to.

 “May I be of any assistance on this ‘hunt’?” Cas asks.

He looks at Dee first, but when he doesn’t seem to find an answer to his question there on her face he turns to Sam. The two of them conduct some sort of Earnest Expression Exchange, and then Sam pipes up with,

“Sure. It’s always good to have an extra pair of hands, isn’t it Dee?”

Dee shrugs, because they don’t really know what it’s like to have an extra pair of hands. On the few occasions they’ve hunted with other people, there’s been too much else at play to judge the helpfulness of those extra hands—whether it’s Jo, or Gordon, or whoever.

“You don’t have a choir practice you need to get to, Cas?” Dee raises an eyebrow.

“There are no vocal rehearsals in heaven.”

 

Dee relents, because Cas has practically begged them to let him come hunting, and he kind of looks like he needs to stab something. Dee knows the feeling, and what can she say? She has compassion for a fellow frustrated soldier. Without her work, Dee gets horribly restless too.

 

They pull up near the club at ten thirty, and Dee’s already climbing out of her car by the time it occurs to her that while she’s dressed to the nines and Sam’s suited up, Cas is still rocking the raggedy tax accountant look.

“You can’t mojo up a nicer outfit, by any chance?”

She’s not sure what she’s expecting—a no? But all of a sudden Cas is standing before her wearing proper penguin getup instead of the tired business casual that usually lives under his trench coat. The coat is nowhere to be seen.

Instead of feeling relieved at the successful costume change, Dee’s struck by how wrong he looks like this. This is the kind of suit that Uriel and the other winged dicks wear; Cas’ angel uniform. Seeing this forces the realisation that Cas is something more than just another angel. He’s barged in on their lives and become something like a friend.

“Could you maybe... change the colour of your tie or something?” she asks.

“Why?” Cas looks down at his front, hands poking at his tie like he’s trying to diagnose whatever’s apparently wrong with it.

“Just, uh,” yeah, Dee will be damned all over again if she has to explain this one. “Make it blue, would you? That’ll match your eyes.”

Sam’s putting on quite the display of incredulous eyebrows movements, and then it finally occurs to Dee exactly what she’s gone and said.

She turns away from both of them and strides towards the bar entrance with commendable stability given her spindly heel support.

 

Dee heads straight for the bar and orders herself a martini, because that’s what James Bond would do. When Cas shows up beside her he’s wearing a dark grey suit instead of his angel-black one, a black shirt instead of his angel-white one, and a satiny sky blue tie that really _does_ bring out the colour of his eyes. _Detailed instruction from Sam_ is written all over him.

“Lookin’ good, Cas,” says Dee, as she forks out twenty dollars for her cocktail. The sooner she finds this vamp guy, or at least someone loaded who’ll buy her her next drink, the better.

“Anything for you, sir?” the bartender asks Castiel.

“No thank you,” says the angel, unsurprisingly.

When the bartender leaves to make someone else’s order, Cas turns to Dee and whispers lowly, “My outfit is convincing?”

Dee gives him another look up and down, lets her eyes linger on the set of Cas’ shoulders, surprisingly broad without that baggy coat on, the taper of his waist surprisingly trim in the remarkably well-tailored jacket he’s wearing now.

If Dee were into to angels, or asshole guys of any kind, she’d probably be imagining what it would be like to take him home and climb all over him right now. She makes sure to expel those thoughts from her mind before she unearths any seriously unwanted feelings of that variety.

“Yeah, ah, very satisfactory, Cas.” It’s a complete cop-out of a compliment, but Cas still smiles broadly at it, which only makes Dee feel bad about not having been honest. She’s not being honest with herself either, though, so she calls it fair.

She looks away from him, down the bar, sees Sam working his charm on a girl with a bob cut who’s the secondary lead they’re following tonight, trying to get a hint as to the location of the nest. Still further down the bar, she spots a sandy-haired guy with a wine-red shirt and a waistcoat under his suit jacket. He’s casting his eyes around the place too, and he meets Dee’s for a moment.

Dee leans close to Cas so she can tell him she’s found their guy.

“Time for me to go and earn an Oscar,” she says, because yes, she does get a kick out of confusing him. Sue her.

Then she stands and pushes her half-finished drink towards him, and makes her way over to vampire guy—Alfredo is apparently the name he goes by.

She sidles up to him, drapes herself over the bar so that her chest is right there in his face and gives him the best smouldering look she’s got. Luckily _I want to kill you_ and _I want to fuck you_ aren’t the furthest apart when it comes to facial expressions, so that makes it easier to come on to him.

“Say, you wouldn’t buy me a drink, would you handsome?” she says, gives her eyelids a slow, fluttering blink. Alfredo’s eyes linger on hers, then slide down to her lips, and eventually land on her cleavage. Dee feels filthy under the attention, filthier than she will when she’s spattered with his blood in some alleyway later tonight.

“Why would I?” Alfredo asks, like he’s not already staring intently at two of the reasons.

Dee affixes a flirtation smile to her mouth and reaches out to smooth a hand over the shoulder of his jacket.

“Oh, I’d make it worth your while, honey,” she says, voice low and dark.

“And what about your other drink?” The one she’d left to Cas.

“Martini wasn’t dirty enough,” Dee licks her lips, moistens the red lipstick.  

“And the guy?”

“Not my type. His tie was _polyester_ , if you know what I mean.”

Dee swings herself up onto the bar stool beside Alfredo, lets the split in her dress expose as much of her thigh as it can without giving away the knife that’s strapped there.

Alfredo chuckles.

“So,” Dee says, tilts her head to the side questioningly—and this is the killer, she knows, because her neck is stretched out and her jugular is _right there_ and he’s a vampire which guarantees that he’s hyper aware of it—“That drink?”

Alfredo waves for the bartender.

“Dirty martini?” he asks Dee.

“I’ll have whatever you’re drinking,” she says.

Alfredo smiles a smile that Dee’s sure is meant to be mysterious. It probably would be if she didn’t already know exactly what he likes to drink.

“Martinis for both of us then,” he says. “Extra dirty.”

He’s playing along, which means he’s taken the bait. It doesn’t mean he believes that Dee is telling the truth; he can hear her blood pumping, hear the skipping of her heartbeat whenever she tells him a lie—it just means that he’s putting her lies down to the fact she wants to seduce him, and he’s letting her do it because he thinks he’s going to fuck and kill her after they leave here. Dee hopes he won’t mind the change of plans. She smiles to herself around the first sip of her new martini. There’s too much olive juice in it for her liking. She wonders what Cas thought of the drink she left behind with him.

She’s snapped away from any Cas-related musings when a heavy hand is planted on her thigh. She works hard to steel herself, make the leap of her pulse seem like pleased surprise and anticipation rather than nerves and disgust.

“That man you were with before,” Alfredo whispers uncomfortably close to Dee’s ear, “he’s been staring at us this whole time.”

“Maybe we should get out of here?” she suggests. “You know, in case he tries to start anything. Not that you two are in the same league, I’m sure.” She says it with a stroke of his lapel, and he’ll hear that this particular remark _isn’t_ a lie, but he won’t know what she really means by it either. He’ll assume she thinks he’s the one who’s a cut above, because it’s clear that that’s what he believes already.

 _Castiel_ , she thinks, messaging him by way of prayer. _Don’t follow us. I’ll call for you if I need any backup._

As she leaves on Alfredo’s arm, Dee manages to sneak one last look at Cas, sitting at the bar. There’s a chick with long black hair that rolls in curls off the huge swells of her breasts leaning up close to him, putting her manicured fingers all over his jacket sleeve. Something cold and inexplicable darts through Dee’s belly when she sees that his eyes are still fixed on her, despite this dark-haired chick’s best efforts to steal his attention.

It’s not like Cas has money to pay her for her services even if he was likely to want any of them, so the lady’s barking up the wrong tree. Dee finds herself utterly without sympathy.

Cas nods, confirming Dee’s instructions, and Dee sends him a surreptitious wink in return, before turning back to the vampire at hand as they exit the joint.

 

“So,” Dee asks as she walks with Alfredo through the chilly night air, “how far is it to your place?”

“Not far at all.”

Dee slips a hand inside her strappy little purse, touches the cylindrical lip gloss tube containing dead man’s blood instead of sparkly gunk, a thin needle instead of a brush applicator. If her aim is good—which it is—this little tool should be capable of getting enough poison into a vamp’s bloodstream to knock it down, giving her the few seconds she needs to find a more substantial weapon.

Dee’s plan of attack for tonight doesn’t require her to use it, but it’s still reassuring just to have it on her.

“Good,” Dee responds. “I’m getting impatient.”

Alfredo leans much further into her personal space than Dee would like to have him.

“Perhaps I’ll offer you a taste now,” he breathes against her lips.

Then Dee’s being backed against the wall of the little street they’re walking along, spine scraping against brick without a layer of fabric in between. She curses backless dresses, amongst other things.

Other things like the pair of lips diving down onto hers, pressing insistently. She suppresses an immediate shudder, lets him do it and slides her left hand around the back of his neck for good measure, so that her right has time to slip under the slit fabric of her dress and find the nice big knife she has hidden there. The moment she closes her fingers around it is a beautiful one.

She pushes Alfredo off her, far enough that her mouth is safe from his again. She shoves him away another step as his fangs descend over his human teeth, brings her arm back as far as she can and forces the sharp blade through his neck.

Alfredo’s head slides slowly to the right, falls to the ground and rolls a couple of feet.

Dee wipes her mouth clean with the back of one hand.

She’s stepping over Alfredo’s headless corpse when she sees the others.

There are four of them, all walking together, mouths open in snarls that Dee’s certain will show a surplus of teeth once they get close enough. She recognises two of them as patrons who’d been milling about the bar when she’d arrived; a skinny blonde woman of maybe forty, and a gingery-haired man with the lumpy facial features of a teenager. The other two are tall, burly men; one wild-haired and dark skinned, the other bald and pale but heavily inked. They’re wearing casual jeans and muscle shirts, and she envies the mobility they’ll have in this fight. The other two are done up fancily, like Dee is, the woman in heels at least four inches tall.

Dee holds up her bloodied knife to show them what they’re in for if they get any closer, bends her legs so that she’s poised to spring into action. Weighing up the situation, she knows the four of them will more than likely get the jump on her, but she’s gambled her life on worse odds, so she stands her ground.

She wonders absently how Cas and his escort are doing back in the bar—no, not _Cas’_ escort. The word choice angers her more than it should. It occurs to her that what she’s feeling is possessiveness over the angel—which is ridiculous. Cas doesn’t belong to her, just like she doesn’t belong to him.

She’ll call out for Cas if things get messy, but not before. If things go south and she can’t take care of this alone, then at least she’ll have given it a shot. That’s what her job is, and she’s damn well going to do it.

“So,” she smirks at the vampires, who are still hovering in a line like none of them wants to make the first move. “Which of you am I slicing up first?”

 

By the time Dee prays to Cas, she’s walking on a dud ankle and knee, spitting salty red from between her teeth, bleeding from the shoulder where the blonde chick had taken a bite and missed her neck, and probably a little bit concussed from being slammed hard up against the wall by the huge black dude. Blondie and baldie are in bits on the asphalt ground of the sidestreet, but the other two are still kicking and Dee’s much worse for wear.

She’s still got a grip on her knife, but right now her hands are pinned by the redhead, who’s spouting some crap about how Alfredo will be avenged and his empire will not be brought down and blah blah blah. Dee couldn’t care less, except that the time he takes blabbering is time he’s not using to drain her.

 _Castiel_ , she prays, _I could use a little back-up now._

In a flash, Cas is standing behind the two vamps with a hand on each of their heads, and Dee shuts her eyes before the light pouring out of their eye sockets gets blinding. When she opens them up again, the monsters are limp bags of burnt-out flesh sagging to the ground along with their three friends.

Cas is frowning like there are weight attached to his eyebrows, pulling them down.

“You are injured,” he observes. “Why did you not call me earlier?”

“I’m fine,” Dee protests, though the statement is weakened somewhat when she steps away from the wall and almost falls onto the heap of bodies. She catches herself just in time.

Cas’ doubtful eyebrow says everything for him, and Dee’s tired and sore and bloody and squeezed into a stupid dress and it just makes her _mad._

“I was handling it,” she snaps. “I don’t need you to ride in and save me from a couple of cuts and bruises.”

Cas steps up to her and before she can move away the universe is spinning sickeningly, and then she’s landing back at the motel where she and Sam are staying, Cas steadying her when the damned shoes refuse to find the floor properly. She kicks them off immediately, which is unpleasant on the left side, since it’s probably sprained.

Cas’ face reads concern now, and right now it just feels like the worst kind of condescension. He reaches out a hand, two fingers pointed like he always does when he’s healing someone, but Dee ducks away from it.

“No,” she says. “I _just_ told you: I can handle a few cuts and bruises. I can deal with my own body, my own injuries, my own life.”

She shuts herself in the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey and a medical kit, and when she comes back out Cas is nowhere to be seen.

Dee pulls on a loose t-shirt to sleep in, sends Sam a sloppy text message to say she killed Alfredo and is back at their room, and then she sprawls out across her bed and lets the exhaustion and the alcohol knock her out.

 

When she wakes up the following morning it’s almost afternoon. Sam is sitting in the corner picking at a salad and scrolling through something on his laptop, as he does. When she stirs, he looks over at her, concern in his eyes. Why can’t people just stop looking at her with that worried puppy dog look? She doesn’t need that crap.

“Cas came by this morning,” Sam says.

Dee stretches out her sore leg, rolls her sore shoulder, rubs the sleep from her eyes.

“And?” she prompts when he doesn’t continue right away.

“He was worried.”

Dee opens her mouth to tell her brother where Cas can shove his _worry_ , because what they’d tackled the previous night was nothing more than she and Sam have tackled before, when Sam holds up a white cardboard box.

“He brought this, too,” he says. “He said he wasn’t sure whether you preferred apple or pecan, so he got a slice of each.”

Dee flounders for the words to say, then finally shuts her mouth again. She doesn’t want Cas’ pity, certainly doesn’t need him bringing her presents.

But on the other hand... _pie._ Her stomach rumbles as if on cue, and she is forced to admit that Cas has won this round with his apology pie, or whatever the hell it is.

“Gimme that,” she snatches the box from Sam and accepts the damn apology pie until there’s none of it left.

 

They don’t see Cas again for several weeks. While he’s off doing whatever angelic things he does, Sam and Dee take out a small family of ghouls, the ghost of a dude who drowned in a park fountain, and a handful of demons who decide to take them on.

They’re in Colorado when Cas finds them. Dee’s ordered pizzas, so when there’s a knock at the door she’s expecting the delivery guy.

What she finds on the doorstep instead is an angel with a dark bruise blackening over his cheekbone, wrapped up in a bloody, dirty trench coat. As much as it irritates her that Cas never uses the door, just pops up whenever and wherever without any warning, it’s a sure sign of something bad now that he’s resorted to things like walking places and knocking for entry.

She drags him inside before anyone sees; there’s too much blood on his clothes for all of it to be his own.

“I apologise—” Cas begins, but his voice is wheezing and Dee holds up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t bother with any of that now, okay,” she says, as Sam helps her haul Cas over to her bed. “Just tell me what the hell happened to you, so we can get you fixed up.”

Cas shakes his head sadly. “My grace has... waned. I fought with one of my sisters and—”

“Lost?” Dee finishes for him, because now that she’s opened up his coat and shirt she can see the long knife wound striping down his chest from nipple to navel.

“I was able to escape,” Cas points out.

“Yeah, okay, so you didn’t lose as badly as you could have—” the thought jars her as she says it, a glaring reminder that Cas isn’t indestructible. If that other angel’s blade had gone through him instead of just glancing across the surface, he could be dead right now. Dee wonders if she’d ever even have found out that he had died, or just gone on thinking Cas had ditched her. The thought hurts so much it surprises her. Dee’s not good at losing people, no matter how much practice she’s had.

“Let’s just get this thing stitched up.”

She takes the needle and thread and with every inch of the cut that she closes up, she feels a little bit better. She wonders whether this is how Cas has felt when he’s healed her and Sam. Whether he just needs to be able to care for people the same way Dee does; to help them in order to find worth in himself. Put that way, Dee’s not sure she’s had good enough reasons for denying him that need.

 

It’s disconcerting seeing Cas sleep—more so than Dee had imagined. She doses him up with half a pack of codeine tablets and before she knows it he’s passed out in his boxer shorts on top of her bed. His features looks softer when he’s asleep, not peaceful, per se, but relaxed; not held taut by the constant vigilance and stiffness that normally comes with being an angel inside a vessel. In a word, Cas looks human.

Dee sits by him for a while, scours the net for new possible cases and drinks her way through a couple of beers. Eventually Sam’s ready for bed and Cas is still out, so she goes and crashes in the Impala.

 

Cas looks somewhat better the following morning. His injuries have healed quicker than an ordinary human’s would, but they’re still visible so he’s definitely still short on mojo. He piles himself into the back seat of the car when Sam and Dee set out to see what the deal is with a town in Minnesota where two separate beauticians have gone psycho and waxed their clients to death. Dee keeps the radio turned down so that he can keep napping as they drive.

Sam’s got his concerned face on, the one where he pulls his brows forward so they wrinkle in the middle, purses his lips and stares pensively. Dee has half a mind to reach across into the passenger seat and try to remould his features into something normal before they stick this way. She misses how Sam used to smile and laugh like he couldn’t keep the joy off his face, just because of some stupid prank. She knows it’s her fault as much as anybody’s that them being brother and sister isn’t quite the same as it was, before she’d died and gone to hell.

Dee tries to focus on the familiar strains of Metallica as they waft out through the speakers. Unlike everyone around her, unlike Dee herself, every note recorded on this cassette is exactly how it always has been.

They stop in to talk to the parents of one of the victims and the girlfriend of the other. There’s no immediate connection, nor is there any sign that either of them had any serious enemies. Alyssa Tibbet was a high school student, an all-rounder with a sunny smile and a good chance of winning both a college scholarship and the title of prom queen, and Maree Franklin was a receptionist at a doctor’s surgery who did a little modelling on the side. Yasmine, the girlfriend, got out a photo album to show Dee, and while Maree was definitely attractivewith her tan and chestnut hair and hourglass figure, she wasn’t so unbelievably perfect-looking that Dee would attribute any of it to witchcraft or a demon deal.

“So these girls both went to separate salons, and as far as we know never even came into contact with one another,” Sam thinks aloud as they stand in the morgue looking down at the body of Maree Franklin. Most of the wax is still there, stuck like it’s marbled through the skin and tissue of her body. Her face in particular is disfigured by it, completely unrecognisable next to the pretty photos Yasmine had shown them. Dee’s seen things, but she’s never seen anything quite like this. Not topside.

“But they both died exactly the same way; smothered in wax hotter than hair removal wax should ever, _ever_ be,” Dee continues along Sam’s train of thought. “Far as I can see, the best chance at a pattern we’ve got here is that both chicks were hot.”

Sam flashes her his patented _That was insensitive, Deanna_ look.

“Hey, I’m just stating facts,” she tells him.  

“Whatever,” he huffs. “So I guess we go and visit the beauticians, find out whether demonic possession had something to do with it?”

They dress as FBI, slip ID badges for Agents Tyler and Hamilton into their jackets, and set Cas up with some entertainment. Dee gets him a burger and fries, and lines up several episodes of _Dr. Sexy_ for him to watch, because Sam gives her a dirty look when she tries to offer him porn. Sam, for his part, gets Cas a Caesar salad and a small pile of books, possibly ones written by Jane Austen. It feels almost like some kind of social experiment, and Dee wishes she could stay and watch what the angel does with these options.

But alas, too soon she’s stepping through the door of a store that smells of chemicals, poorly masked by incense so sickly-sweet it should be masked by something itself. Dee wrinkles her nose and steps up to the counter, where a woman with yellowy-bleached hair smiles up at her.

“How can I help you?” she asks. “Let me guess, eyebrows?”

“Uh,” Dee says eloquently. “Eyebrows?” she raises one.

“Stacey could fit you in for an eyebrow wax at ten fifteen tomorrow morning.”

By the time Dee reins in her horror she’s pretty sure her face has given it all away.

“No, no no no,” she tells blondie, whose name tag reads Ella. “I’m not here to make an appointment. I’m—”

“FBI,” Sam steps in, flashing his badge smoothly like the punch-line-stealing bastard he is.

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Ella’s mouth drops open for a second. She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “so you’re here about Maree, then?”

“Yes,” says Sam. “What can you tell us about the incident?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Ella sighs. “She was a pretty girl, came here all the time to see Desiree, but I wasn’t working on the day she—well, the day that it happened.”

Desiree is Desiree Rawlins, one of the two ladies to go all house of wax on their clients.

“Is there anybody here who _was_ working at the time?”

“Sure, Annette was definitely in. She was the one who came in and found Maree... well, you know. She’s with a client right now but it’s her lunch break in ten minutes.”

 

Ten minutes later, they’re talking to a portly woman with wispy grey-blonde hair, who shoves a sandwich in her gob without her glare ever shifting.

“I don’t know nothing,” she grumbles around the mouthfuls of food. “Girl just went nuts. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. I don’t think I want to know. I got nothing special to tell you fellas, just like I had nothing special to tell the cops.”

“But you

were the one who found Maree, weren’t you?” Dee breaks in.

“Yep,” says Annette. She doesn’t elaborate.

 

Another ten minutes and they’re walking back to the Impala, no closer to an answer.

“I’m sorry if you didn’t get what you needed,” Ella had told them on their way out. “Annette can be a bit prickly. It’s kind of funny, she’s always talkative with the customers. Doesn’t shut up if I’m totally honest. I guess she just saves the gossip for them.”

“Better try our luck at the other parlour then,” Dee says, slamming the driver side door behind her and starting the engine impatiently.

“You don’t think maybe we should go undercover for this one?” Sam suggests.

“We are undercover. In case you’d forgotten, we’re not _actually_ FBI.”

Sam huffs. “No, I mean a different kind of undercover. Ella said that Annette talks much more freely around customers. Maybe if we’re customers, they’ll tell us what we need to know?”

Dee knows what this means, and it’s getting stamped with a big fat _hell no_ before the idea can make it off the ground.

“Aw, Sammy, if you wanted a bikini wax all you had to do was say so.”

“Gross, Dee,” Sam pouts. “I was actually thinking you might have a better shot at blending in than me.”

Seeing it coming from a mile away doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. Dee’s already shaved her legs and armpits once this month, for that vampire hunt, and once is more than enough. She hunts monsters; she doesn’t need to be hairless to do it.

“No way. The closest I’ve come to waxing my _anything_ is when that witch in Tennessee threw burning candles at me. This is not my area.”

Sam’s pout deepens, impossibly. When it comes to Sam’s bitchfaces, though, Dee’s come to expect the impossible.

“I’m not suggesting—”

“Can it, Sam.”

To her surprise, Sam actually falls silent.

It doesn’t last.

“You could just let them do your eyebrows,” he says. “Doesn’t even have to be wax; they could thread them.”

“They could what them?”

Sam has the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “Threading. It’s kind of like plucking. Jess used to do it.”

“Right. Answer’s still no.”

Sam’s frustration crests and breaks. He turns to her, voice rising. “What are you so afraid of?” he asks. “I know it’s not the pain, so what is it that you care so much about?”

And damn it, that’s the problem right there. She _does_ care. She’s so adamant about not caring that she cares about it. She cares about not seeming to care.

“Fine,” she gives in. “I guess even if they mangle my face, I’ll still have my charm and perky nipples to bring the ladies to the yard.”

Sam stifles a laugh but fails to hide his smugness. “Sure, Dee.”

They go back to the motel so that Dee can change into her usual clothes. Cas is sitting on one of the beds next to an empty burger container and salad cup, staring transfixed at the TV screen as Dr. Sexy makes out with Dr. Ellen Piccolo in an elevator. Sam’s novel collection sits forgotten on the bedside table.

“Good man,” Dee claps Cas on the shoulder, and he tears his eyes away from the screen to look up and smile at her. It’s a smile that does things it shouldn’t be allowed to, clutching at something inside her that nobody’s supposed to touch. Worst of all, Dee’s not sure she can pretend she hates the feeling of it for much longer. Cas smiles with his whole face, so genuine it’s like he wouldn’t be able to fake it if he tried. And he smiles like Dee’s approval means the world to him.

“Were your inquiries successful?” Cas asks.

“Not so much,” says Sam. “We only went to one place though. We’re heading to the other in just a minute.”

“Costume change,” explains Dee as she awkwardly dances her way out of her tight pencil skirt and stockings. She’d be thrilled to see them go if only the role she was getting into next was actually an improvement on FBI.

She looks back up to see Cas watching her with interest. Academically, Dee realises that he’s seen every part of her—he’s seen her so naked she didn’t even have any skin on to cover her soul—but it’s still strange to be under his gaze. Cas doesn’t observe things by halves; when he looks, he looks at every detail, like he’s cataloguing each molecule of his subject.

Dee’s face doesn’t heat up. That would be ridiculous.  

She holds his gaze for as long as she can before giving up and going to find her plaid button-down.

 

“I want to get my eyebrows done,” Dee tells the receptionist at Angel’s Secret beauty salon. The muscles in her face are stiff, hardly working to get the words out, but she manages to force them in the end.

“Sure thing sugar,” the woman tells her. “When’d you like to book in for?”

“Uh, I was actually wondering if you had any vacancies now,” Dee fixes her expression somewhere between hopeful and apologetic.

The receptionist looks at her computer screen.

“Well, we’re usually not available at such short notice,” she says, “but as a matter of fact you’re in luck today. We’ve been lighter on appointments this week, since, well, I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“Yeah,” Dee says, “terrible.”

“So terrible,” the receptionist agrees. “Diana actually saw it happen, I can’t imagine coming back to work after witnessing something like that. She’s a brave woman.”

Dee nods along. “Sounds like a hard worker. I respect that. Say, would Diana be available to do my brows for me?”

 

Diana turns out to be a tall, sinewy woman with long gingery hair pulled up into a tight bun. Her mascara is so thick and clumpy Dee wonders how she manages to lift her eyelids every time she blinks.

She takes Dee around the back. Dee’s not nervous. She’s been to hell. She’s not scared of a little hair removal. Besides, she’s working. She can’t afford to be distracted.

“Terrible business,” Diana says when Dee asks about the killing. “Georgia-Ray always seemed like such a nice girl. She was only eighteen, too—the kind o’ young sweet thing you don’t expect to find watchin’ violent movies on the TV, let alone actually hurtin’ anybody. She’d just started here, fresh beauty school graduate, new in town too. She had this brainy brother who was goin’ to Harvard, always talkin’ fondly about him. Missed her family a great deal, she did. Even kept a picture of them with her things out the back.”

“Hard to imagine this girl killing anybody. Are you certain she did it?”

Diana dives right in. “Oh yes,” she says hurriedly. “I saw it with my own two eyes. I heard the most awful screamin’, y’see, so I came to check what was goin’ on. There was poor sweet Alyssa, lyin’ there all burnt and bloody, and Katie, oh she had this look in her eyes—it was cold, all businesslike. Then that look just disappeared—probably ‘cause she noticed me there watchin’. Suddenly she was all hysterical, cryin’ and carryin’ on like she hadn’t just done what she did. Just a show if you ask me. She looked mighty pleased with herself before.”

Dee makes a sound of agreement, holding still while Diana’s hands move over her face. She keeps her eyes focused on the ceiling, anchors herself to it to remind herself that she’s not down on the racks in hell, no matter how much the position tempts her to remember.

“Did she say anything to you?” she asks. “Anything at all?”

Diana sniffles, pauses as though thinking. Then her face lights up with a look Dee knows well.

“Actually, there _was_ something more,” she says.

Dee makes a noise she hopes sounds inviting.

“This might sound crazy, but I could swear it’s what I heard—she said, ‘Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain.’”

“That’s interesting,” Dee says. Because it is—a weird tag line like that is their first real lead on this thing.

“Crazy,” Diana says.

“Can’t argue with you there.”

“Now dear,” Diana says, “this is just going to pinch a little bit.”

 

Dee checks her eyebrows out in the Impala’s rear view mirror for a full minute before starting her up and pulling out from the curb. They’ve never been unsightly, never spilled over her face in some massive, dark monobrow, but they do look significantly sharper now. She touches the skin, reddened slightly but satisfyingly smooth. Dee knows that she would like these eyebrows on the face of another woman, but she’s hesitant to like them on herself. Sculpted body hair isn’t _her_ , isn’t what she’s built herself and been built to be. It would be easier if she simply hated it, but it isn’t simple.

 

Sam wisely does not comment when Dee walks back in through the door of the motel room.

Cas takes one look at her, tilts his head curiously and says, “Your eyebrows are different.”

She’s still all the way over the far side of the room; how he notices things like that is beyond her sometimes.

“Yeah. Had to get the hot gossip from the salon for our case. Why, you like them Cas?”

Cas doesn’t express any opinion, just asks, “Do you like them, Deanna?” like that’s all that matters. Like he likes them if she does, dislikes them if they make her unhappy. Why can’t he just make it easy and say something obnoxious, something judgmental, give her something to push back against, damn it?

“What did you find out?” Sam asks.

“Well, it definitely sounds like something took over and forced these women to commit the murders. The woman I spoke to said Georgia-Ray seemed pleased with what she’d done at first, then suddenly shifted to hysteria. She was shouting that it hadn’t been her, that she’d been possessed, when they took her away.”

“So, demon?”

“No reports of black smoke or sulphur. We could still be looking at ghost possession, or maybe some creature that works like a siren does?”

“What sort of ghost would haunt beauty salons?” Sam asks. “Two separate ones. Would a ghost even be able to move between places like that? They’re on opposite sides of the town.”

It’s not the greatest ever conclusion, Dee agrees.

“Just tossing up some options.”

“Could it be a shape shifter?”

It’s possible, Dee supposes. The hysterics afterward would have to go down to acting, but she’s known shifters to get all emotional about how they’re outcasts. Maybe making other people’s skin melt off could give them some sort of sick comfort.

“The girl also said something, after she did it,” Dee adds. “She said, uh, _Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain_.”

Sam’s rapid tapping indicates he’s searching up the phrase right away, but Cas interrupts before he finds anything.

“But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised,” he recites.

“What the hell?”

“It is Proverbs, chapter thirty-one, verse thirty. The wording of the King James Version, to be precise.”

“So, what, this is some kind of psycho fundamentalist crap?”

Cas frowns. He looks seriously troubled, which is not a good sign. “Of a kind,” he says. “I believe this may be the doing of an angel.”

Sam lets out a small sound of disbelief.

“Really?” he asks. “An angel would do this? Why?”

Cas shakes his head slowly. “It is not the norm. These incidents appear too random and trivial to be heaven’s orders, and yet they draw inspiration from the Word in a way a fallen angel would not.”

“So, what, one of heaven’s mooks got bored and decided to dish out punishments for vanity?”

“I do not know.”

Ordinarily Dee would press for a better answer, but his tone is edged with such dejection that she just can’t find it in her. She’s had a crappy day herself. She doesn’t want to fight with her friend when she could jump up next to him and watch some secretly awesome shitty television.

So that’s exactly what she does.

 

When Dee wakes up drooling into Cas’ shoulder, that’s when she realises that Sam has left her to nap and kept working without her. Right now, her brother is slamming back into their room, moving loudly enough to rouse her and quickly enough that any reprimands she wants to hit him with slide away unnoticed.

“We have another vic,” Sam says, “and a name.”

 

 “Haziel.” Cas repeats the name like he’s hearing about a death in the family. “Are you quite certain?”

Sam looks at him sympathetically. “That’s what the witness said. She said a young woman claiming to be the angel Haziel came and spoke to her. She remembered feeling lightheaded and weak, but then the girl touched her and there was warmth flooding over her. Then it all went blank and the next thing she knew, she was standing over the dead body of a customer.”

“Can angels do that?” Dee asks with a frown. “Make people do things without actually possessing them as vessels? None of the angels we’ve run into have done that. This sounds more like the time Father Gregory’s spirit thought he was an angel and had people murdering the friendly neighbourhood shady motherfuckers.”

“It is possible for an angel to share a very small amount of grace with a human, causing feelings of intense awe, and linking the human to the angel’s cause,” Cas sighs. “It is not a sustainable practice for us. I have not heard of it being done since Biblical times—Daniel chapter ten details one such instance. It diminishes our grace permanently, and is usually only done in obedience to strict orders. I can assure you that none in heaven have given Haziel orders to give revelation to beauticians, or cause them to murder patrons. Haziel herself was always... well, passionate about defeating the vice of vanity. I believe this is an independent mission of hers.”

Dee’s not certain of what she’s hearing. It sounds crazy—whole new kinds of crazy, which isn’t something she’s ever needed—but it sounds like this Haziel is in the middle of some sort of last hurrah.

“How many times can an angel do this before it runs out of grace?” she asks.

“Many more than three,” Cas replies. “She must be stopped—for her own good, as well as the good of anyone she sees as overly preoccupied with appearance. Haziel is old-fashioned; I believe she could find fault enough in over half the population of this planet to destroy them.”

“I’ll work on finding a summoning ritual, then,” Sam grabs his laptop and Dad’s journal, where they’ve written down the rituals they’ve used in the past, and leaps into action. “Cas,” he says, “could you help me?”

“Of course,” says Cas, who slides off the bed and walks—still hunching slightly with the pain, Dee notes—over to sit beside Sam.

“Anybody want anything from the store?” Dee asks, because she hates research and that leaves her with nothing to do here but sit and think about things she’d rather not. “I’m getting beer and pie.”

 

It’s lucky they still have ingredients left over from the last summoning they did, or they’d be having a bitch of a time trying to get their hands on some of the herbs they need. They’ve still got plenty of the holy oil Cas brought them from Jerusalem, which is just as well because with his angel mojo out of action, they’d have to catch a plane to go there and get their hands on another jug now. Dee’s kind of been taking the trips he makes for them for granted because of how quickly he gets things done, but with Cas moving at normal human speed now, she appreciates the miraculous help he’d been before all the more. That appreciation also melts into guilt at just about every opportunity.

“Hey,” she says quietly, taking Cas by the arm as they head out to the Impala, ready to drive somewhere secluded and summon themselves a(nother) suicidally righteous angel. “I’m sorry about your mojo, man.”

“It’s not your fault,” Castiel tells her, grave as ever. “These are the consequences of my own decisions.”

He’s not getting it, though, and suddenly Dee is filled with the vicious need to just make him _understand_.

“I know,” she says, “but a lot of the things you decided were based on my suggestions. I just mean that I know I don’t say it, haven’t said it, but I appreciate that. I haven’t thanked you when I should have.”

Cas looks at her strangely, like he’s trying to read something scrawled beneath her skin. His face is so tired compared to how it looked when he first strode into that barn; he looks softer, baggier with bruises and lost sleep that he’s now begun to need. His mouth stretches out into a smile that’s almost too wide, too human to be the Castiel Dee knows. Only almost, though. At the same time, it feels like she’s just seeing a side of Cas she already knew was there.

“I know you, Deanna Winchester,” Cas says. “I know you in a way which renders words pointless in many ways—but in knowing you, I know what it means for you to say those things. I understand.”

He lifts a hand slowly to Dee’s face, just rests it lightly over her cheek and _looks_ at her, that smile still on his face, nearly alien in its utter humanity. A moment later, the hand is gone and they’re walking again, side by side, enough space in between them that Dee aches to close it.

 

 

Haziel is just tired. Dee gets that. She doesn’t think that weariness gives anybody a license to kill, but she can at least sympathise when the angel looks sadly out through her vessel’s eyes, snaps and snarks at them for a while and then gives up.

“If you plan to kill me, Castiel,” she says, “then _do_ it.”

Cas has his angel face on again, for the most part, but Dee can see the pain that flickers in his eyes as he looks at the other angel, standing in the ring of holy fire, just waiting for the end to come to her.

“I do not wish to do that, sister,” he says.

Haziel huffs out a jaded little laugh. “There are worst fates than death, Castiel. I have been resigned to that for some time. I had only wished to deplete myself in a way that was meaningful, and true to who I have always been. It is a dark time to be a servant of heaven. You, out of all of us, must know that.”

Cas nods. “It is a dark time—but that is why we are needed. Those who can _see_ the corruptness in heaven for what it is are rare and precious.”

“You think that there is fighting to be done,” says Haziel, “but I have never been the soldier you are. I cannot bear to fight another war, and I will be of no use on the battlefield. I only want to forget it all, to be no longer that which I am.”

Cas is quiet for a long moment. Dee and Sam both hold the silence, understanding the weight of the moment.

“I am no longer that which I was,” Cas says, suddenly. “My grace has waned. For now I am still part angel, but I am becoming something else. Becoming human.”

“Is that a suggestion?” Haziel cocks an eyebrow. “What are you saying?”

“Do you remember Anna?” Cas goes on, picking up speed. “Who fell—who cut out her own grace and became human, became someone and something new?”

“I remember,” says Haziel. “I also know that she is now in heaven’s dungeons, an angel once more and paying dearly for her disobedience.”

“She was forced to regain her grace in difficult circumstances. A remnant of her angelic identity linked her to our wavelengths, and her past became known to demons and angels alike. You could learn from that mistake though; ensure you sever such a connection.”

Haziel looks thoughtful, if unconvinced. “I should like to be something else,” she says. “But there would always be my grace. It would always remain, always haunt me, and surely one day it would be restored as Anael’s was. I had been attempting to use it up productively, before you trapped me.”

“I could take it for you,” Cas offers. He sounds certain.

“And, what, keep it in a vial around your neck?” Haziel chuckles. “Castiel, you admit that you are not what you were. I see those wounds on your vessel, healing so slowly you could be one with it, virtually a human yourself. How could you guard a beacon of energy like another angel’s grace, when you have barely enough of your own to sustain yourself?”

“I have just enough grace left,” Cas says. “Just enough to ensure that a... _transfusion_ would not be entirely foreign and burn me from the inside. Just enough to hide your grace within the remaining shell of mine.”

“It has been known to work,” Haziel muses. “It is well-known that Balthazar successfully restored Joel with a measure of his grace during the last war.”

“It is true,” Cas agrees. “I was there to see it.”

“You mean it was reckless and you warned him against it.”

“I am not what I have been,” Cas says again.

Haziel nods decisively. “Good,” she says. “Then take my grace. Fight this battle that I cannot.”

And in a roar of light, Castiel does.

 

 

They drive a young woman called Hazel to the nearest bus station with the money and the necessarily fictions of an identity with which to send her on her way. Cas is quiet the whole way, sitting stiffly in the back seat beside the woman who was once his sister but now believes he, Sam and Dee are merely strangers kind enough to pick up a hitchhiker. They bid her a quick farewell and watch her scurry off towards the ticket office. There’s a renewed energy in her movements that assures Dee they made the right decision, and she tells Cas as much. He offers her a grim smile, not nearly as nice as the huge open one from before, but it warms her nonetheless.

They pull up outside their motel room and Cas uses the door to get out of the car, even though he’s running on a full tank of mojo again. He moves straight to Dee’s bed and sits down one end. He fiddles with the TV remote for a while, before apparently giving up and using his powers to put _Dr. Sexy_ on. Dee feels proud and strangely dirty seeing him put his heavenly energies to such use.

She sits down in the space left beside him and, wordlessly, they watch the doctors immersed in an emotionally charged heart transplant. Somewhere along the line, Cas shifts a little closer, so that their shoulders are pressed together. Dee finds that it’s nice, just being reassured that Cas is there, and she figures that Cas must feel the same way. He’s lost family today, after all; Dee knows from experience that that’s about as rough as it gets.

Sam, inexplicably, announces that he’s going to buy himself some coffee. Dee tells him that he should maybe have thought about buying whatever food he wanted while they were out on the road just five minutes ago, but then the reason why Sam’s really gone out sinks in.

“So, ah,” she says, awkwardly butting into the stillness that’s been magnified by Sam’s departure.

Cas tilts his head towards her in question. He doesn’t move away, though, so it leaves his face no more than a couple of inches away from hers. Really, it’s simpler for Dee just to close that distance and press her lips against his than to try and use her words.

Cas doesn’t really kiss her back, but he doesn’t freeze into a block of angelic concrete either, so Dee takes that as a good sign. When she pulls away, he says nothing, just looks on intently and waits for her to say what she means to say.

“What are your thoughts on that?” Dee asks, voice embarrassingly thready and uncertain, like the words are mossy stepping stones and she’s slipping off the edge of every one of them into the river.

“My thoughts on kissing you?” Cas says, straightforward as ever.

“Yeah, that. And, y’know, maybe even more than that?”

Cas surveys her again, as if he’s verifying that the words mean what he suspects they do. Then he smiles. His sadness for Haziel is still visible, there at the edges—sadness that won’t shift quickly, and probably won’t ever leave completely—but the smile is, overall, the same broad, toothily human one that had tapped into Dee’s chest before. It’s just as good the second time, and she doubts she’ll ever build up a resistance.

“I would like that very much,” says Cas, and it’s the easiest it has been yet for Dee to admit that she would too.

 

EPILOGUE

 

One of an endless procession of afternoons, while they’re shoving their belongings back into their duffel bags, Dee comes across a spider in her corner of the room, hiding out amongst her stuff. It’s a big hairy one; black, possibly venomous. She’s searching around for one of her boots to smack it with when Cas appears.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Dee keeps burrowing through her things until she remembers that her boots are still out in the Impala. She may have gone out wearing strappy sandal things, but she wasn’t going to do it without the moral support of knowing a pair of sturdy shoes were there for her in case of an emergency, stashed nearby. She starts hunting for the strappy gold things to kill the spider with instead.

“Just looking for a shoe so that I can get rid of that spider,” she answers Cas.

“Oh,” he says. “I can take it for you.” And then he’s leaning over her and reaching down to pick up the spider with his bare hands. He looks down at the thing with that big blue gaze of his, like it’s a precious little baby. She forgets sometimes that as well as being a soldier Castiel can be a total hippie sometimes.

“My father’s creations are so very intricate,” Cas says, as the spider buries its fangs in the skin of his hand. Or it tries to, anyway. Poor thing’s probably getting the kind of rude shock that Dee herself did when she tried to sock him in the jaw and found out the hard way that angels are made of freakin’ concrete.

“Yeah, and right now this one is trying to kill you. If you care so much about it, then take it outside before it dies of confusion.”

The look Cas shoots her is a little forlorn, but Dee’s lived with Sam all her life, so it takes more than a little dose of the doe eyes to shake her resolve.

“She is a beautiful specimen,” he remarks, then disappears in a whoosh of angelic abruptness.

“Should I be jealous?” Dee asks the air.

It’s a joke, but when Cas returns a second later he tells her gravely that no other creature in his father’s creation could eclipse her in his eyes.

It’s a line from some fucking fairytale, but Dee takes it and savours it nonetheless—because when Cas says shit like that, he’s not just flattering her, and he doesn’t mean that she has prettier eyes or nicer tits or that her ass looks better in a dress than other girls’ and he wants to rescue her from a tower and ride off into the sunset. He means he pulled the wreckage of her soul from amongst all the others in pit—raw cruelty and corruption and all—so that she could keep fighting here on earth, and he’d do it again.


End file.
